Forums Forums National News Smart meters

They may be smart, but the deployment of them certainly isn't.

We had a smart electricity meter from a previous supplier. I liked the fact that it saved me having to read the meter, and when the time came I made sure my new supplier would fit a smart gas meter too. In due course, the man came to fit it, only to find it wasn't compatible with the smart electricity meter. After a long acrimonious phone discussion with his head office, he very decently announced that he would fit both, despite the office trying to get him to come back on a separate day. The two work well and I am now relieved of the task of reading the gas meter too as well as being able to monitor what it costs!

But it seems these are 'SMETS1' meters! These cannot be used by another supplier, so if I switch again - which I normally do every year - I will have to have both swapped again to a 'SMETS2' meters, which are not going to be fitted until October!

How much all this buggering about has cost I have no idea. They are free to the consumer, but no doubt the cost is eventually recovered via higher fuel prices.

The government is, meanwhile, spending loads more cash on stupid ads on the telly, urging one and all to get them installed. The government organisation responsible for this cannot be contacted by you and me and there appears no way that one can establish if a proposed new supplier can use your smets1 meter. Even more money is splashed on urging people to switch, despite the fact that the smart meters are stopping people doing that.Probably easier to stick with the same supplier rather than going through a meter-changing ceremony every year!

Any sensible person would have started by developing a smart meter specification that could be manufactured by anyone, and used by any supplier well before deploying them at all. I suspect this cock-up has cost us all billions already, with more to come. Sometimes I get close to despair!

I changed supplier just to stop scottish power ringing me every 5 minutes asking if i wanted a smart meter ...and of course to save money. Together Energy £400+ a year cheaper.

In most cases there will be no need to physically change a smets1 meter to a smets2, most smets1 can be converted into a smets2 by a remote software update.

One possible instance where this might not be the case are some systems that only do slow updates (eg 30 mins electricity and 1 day gas), I read all the words about this and gleaned nothing so I'm surmising it might be a problem.

There are so many smoke and mirror statements its difficult to understand anything. One company (OVO) is implying that when they convert to smets2 they will no longer support the smart energy analysis tool that give feedback to the customers.

Well, I hope you are right DD.

Interesting that they are remotely hackable though. It is the last thing I'd want of something collecting money from customers if I were a utility! There may well be ways of reducing one's bills by a lot more than Fish's £400+ a year...

The British Gas ones are just about impossible to hack remotely (unless there are backdoors in place), your online account would be hugely easier to hack.

The smart reader is not connected to the broadband internet, it operates over the mobile phone network, they could be put on private channels which adds another layer of security that would have to be hacked.

But British Gas software being British Gas software it can probably be hacked by whispering "let me in" to it, whereupon it rolls over and lets you tickle its tummy.

Ethical Hacking lol...

More disasters on the Smart Meter roll-out. Due to more delays in getting the system fully compatible for customers to change suppliers it is estimated it is going to cost an extra £3bn.

The estimated total is going to be £14bn or £374 per customer.

As they estimate a smart customer saving of £18 a year it is going to penalise customers for over 20 years.

Another fine way this Government has looked after its people! ..... so where has the money gone this time? It would seem to be Capita own Smart DCC Ltd, the company that has been causing the delays in the integration.

In the meantime companies like EDF have been fined for not rolling out smart meters despite the infrastructure not being ready yet. This fine will of course be passed on to the customers.

BG pestered and pestered me to have one on my gas meter.

When the guy came round and saw it under the sink he just said "sorry, we can't do it, its in a restricted place".

Lets not forget it was Labour who introduced this, so not strictly "this" government.

I noticed that they blamed Ed Milliband but the DCC started in 2013, the costly mistakes were after 2010 specifically during the reviews in 2013 and 2014.

The smets1 meters were issued as a trial before 2013 but due to mistakes and delays it was randomly decided to continue their roll-out and they are still being issued until next year.

The initial program was badly thought out but wasn't hugely expensive and it was a trial, the program should have been halted in or before 2013 until they had the technology to cope and patched up the problems instead of marching past them and making more mistakes.

any one with any form of intelligence does Not need a smart meter. Even though now in old age I can remember a saying from long ago. { if you don't need it then switch it off } a lot of people are to lazy to bother switching things off when not been actually used.

Smart meters do more than the old energy monitors (Owls etc). Its ultimate aim is to open up the consumer market to variable time off-peak usage, this will reduce the peak amount of power required and hence reduce the number of power stations and perhaps more importantly reduce the amount of money spent having power stations on standby without providing any electricity to the grid.

Ultimately we may end up with the grid controlling things like washing machines, you instruct your washing machine and state when you want it done by and the grid chooses what time during the night it switches your washing machine on so balancing the load through the night and bringing generators up as necessary.

I can't see that the meters issued by various companies have to be compatible in order to facilitate switching.

The sensible thing would be for all of them to read the meters they install and if the customer wants to move to another supplier, then they would have to supply the new company with readings. On balance, they would probably break even, although given time this might be rendered unnecessary if new compatible meters are installed by them all.

I don't know how the smart gas meters work. They might have a turbine in the flow which measures how much gas is passing and generates enough power to supply the electronics. They do have batteries, but I think they could merely keeping the thing working when no gas is being drawn. Or they might just have some kind of ultrasonic method of measuring flow? I'd be interested to find out.

When my smart gas meter got fitted, I was told the battery lasted ten years! If that's true it must be supplying a miniscule amount of power, or of course the meter is 99% battery!

I think we HAVE reduced our consumption. I now switch off things which I would have left on in the past and learning that one 'living flame' fire consumes almost as much as the boiler (most of the heat going up the chimney) has certainly made us think twice before turning it on.

Yes, gas meter does run off a large battery. It only “talks” every 30 mins so does use very little power.

I have a feeling the gas meters still run off a bellows system, the size of the meters hasn’t significantly reduced which you would expect with most other systems. Bellows would help to use even less power than more continuous systems.

The problem with each company reading own meter is that six companies have gone bust so far this year.

so will high energy use items like washing machine, tumble dryers that are switched on while you are in bed fast asleep suddenly become safe to run, which at present is warned against by the fire brigade due to the possible danger of fire